Tech startups are currently awash in mutual fund investments, particularly from such well-known names as Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price. And, as we’ve been regularly reporting, such funds regularly revalue those shares, based on proprietary formulas that likely rely on public market comps (even though it’s often silly to compare a startup to a more mature issuer).
One of the less talked about mutual fund players is The Hartford, whose $5.4 billion Growth Opportunities Fund houses shares of such companies as Honest Co., General Assembly, Pinterest, WeWork and Uber.
So we took a look at the fund’s most recent financial report, which showed valuations as of Dec. 31, 2015. And then we put those into a chart, alongside what the fund originally paid for the shares, and where those shares were held as of Oct. 31, 2015:
Of the 14 companies that saw their valuations change, nine of them went lower than their Oct. 31 mark. The upward exceptions were WeWork, Uber, Coupang, Zuora, and The Honest Co.